“Napolinegra” by Vincenzo Sbrizzi for IOD Edizioni. Book presentation, tomorrow 9 April at 19 pm, live streaming from the publishing house’s Facebook page
Speeches by Hilarry Sedu, Aly Dior Diakite and Daniela Fiore
The second volume of the “Cronisti scalzi” series has been released Iod Editions dedicated to Giancarlo Siani. It is “Napolinegra” by Vincenzo Sbrizzi. Twenty-five stories of people who came from the sea with the preface by Isaia Sales.
The series was created under the auspices of the Giancarlo Siani Onlus Foundation.
RECITALS
The journalist originally from Torre Annunziata, winner of the 2020 Giancarlo Siani Prize, tells the stories of migrants who have found their safe haven in Naples. Stories of suffering and extraordinary strength, told in a raw and direct way with the aim of turning those who are usually considered numbers into people. Stories of families abandoned by minors, torture, risks, beatings, harassment, slavery, injustice and blind bureaucracy. But also dreams, affections, courage, desire for normality. People who trusted the author and allowed him to enter their world, stripping themselves of all modesty thanks to the courage to want to shout out what the West is ignoring at this very moment. A modern massacre that no one wants to take responsibility for, with the aggravating circumstance that today we have all the information available and yet we have decided to ignore it.
"My most recurring nightmare, since I was a teenager, is to find myself in the hands of the Nazis in a concentration camp," the author writes in the introduction. "Like all human beings, I am cowardly enough to wake up when I realize in my sleep that things are going badly. Talking to these people, however, made me understand that in reality we are the Nazis of today," he continues bluntly. "I am too, even though I am not lifting a finger. That in every book I have read, in every film I have seen or testimony I have heard about the Shoah I have always exclaimed: "But how is it possible that no one noticed. How is it possible that no one did anything." These people have taught me that instead it is possible because that is what we are all doing at this very moment. The concentration camps are in Africa and Eastern Europe but we pretend not to see them. We do nothing. I do nothing."
These words, like all those in the book, chosen thanks to the editing of Maria Rosaria Vado, are stomach punches that the author inflicts on himself and on the readers. Stones thrown at those who have decided to get used to horror. Like the cover created thanks to the creativity of Gix Musella, an expert in editorial and communication graphics, with the shots of Alessandra Finelli, who portrays a black pietà. And the artistic direction of the young editor Francesco Testa.
A mother mourning her own child, the symbol of Christianity dedicated to those who now carry the suffering of the world on their shoulders like Mary in the Christian imagination. And then there is Naples, the common thread of all these stories. The background far from the common oleography of the city. A dirty city, mistreated, insulted, "black" like the protagonists of the stories, but ready to welcome them. With all its limitations, its defects, but like a mother who does not differentiate between her children. She reserves the same opportunities and the same dangers for everyone. The only place left in Italy where being poor is not a crime. The only place where the poor do not turn their backs on other poor people.
ISAIAH SALES | From the preface
"This is a book that would not need a preface, any encouragement to read it. I asked myself, while I was trying to put these reflections on paper, what else I could add to what Sbrizzi wrote with words that are stones, carved with the suffering, pain and hopes of the protagonists. This is a book that speaks, that shouts, that protests, that anguishes, that shakes. Those who react with indifference and cynicism to the story of the troubled lives of migrants do not deserve the title of human."
SYNOPSIS
Twenty-five stories of people who had to face the sea to save their lives. People kidnapped and sold as slaves in the desert. People who saw death take over everything around them. True stories of migrants interviewed by the author who have in common the journey and the suffering but also the desire to take the future they have always dreamed of. Like Adam who left Mali at 14 to graduate at 25 in Italy or like Justina who was saved from prostitution thanks to Chris she met in Libya. Like Paboy who completely erased the weeks of torture in Libya or like Rachelle who lost the love of her life there. Like Saeid who arrived in Italy in a container or like Fata who saw a friend of hers disappear in the sand. Like Abrar beaten bloody in the streets of Naples or like Bechir who risked dying from a brain problem while waiting for his documents. And then the torture suffered by Kebe', by Dimitri, by Abdul or the oppression of the bureaucracy that the security decrees have fueled. Twenty-five stories of people who all live their new life in Naples, an "irregular" city like them and perhaps for this reason the only one capable of giving them a little welcome.
THE AUTHOR
Vincenzo Sbrizzi is a professional journalist from Torre Annunziata (Naples). Born in 1984, he graduated in Communication Sciences at the University of Suor Orsola Benincasa with a thesis in History of the Mafia, supervisor Isaia Sales. He attended a master's degree in Marketing and Digital Communication at the Business School of "Il Sole 24 ore" and masterclasses in social media and copywriting at "The Guardian" in London. He worked for Striscia la notizia, Fanpage, Il Mattino, Roma, Optima Italia and currently works for Napolitoday and Today of the Citynews group. Together with Simona Melorio, he published the essay "Torre Annunziata: between camorra and deindustrialization" for Editoriale Scientifica, with which he won the Giancarlo Siani Prize 2020.
EDITOR'S NOTE
“Cronisti Scalzi” is the new series from Iod Edizioni that aims to collect the stories, narrations and tales of young reporters from the suburbs, inside and outside the walls of our cities, committed to resisting a journalism that is increasingly adapting to the conformism of dominant thought and strong powers. We are convinced that today more than ever we need a new generation of reporters who know how to live, with their minds and hearts, the neighborhoods, alleys and squares of the degraded suburbs, to passionately tell the facts and faces of the people who every day work hard to build, in their own small way, a clear and conscious alternative to social degradation and the excessive power of the Camorra clans. We want to give space, together with authoritative voices of investigative journalism, to those young precarious journalists, who continue to be present on site, barefoot, and who preserve the memory, style and method of Giancarlo Siani, precarious journalist, killed by the Camorra on the evening of September 23, 1985, and defined by Erri De Luca as a "barefoot reporter".
"In the Seventies," says the writer and intellectual dear to us, "we liked the barefoot doctors in China who went to the villages to try to prevent diseases. Giancarlo was a barefoot journalist, he didn't wait for the news to report it, but looked for the bloody mechanism that produced it. Those were the years of the boarding, the earthquake had razed decency to the ground, everything was permitted to get rich, life was worth a spit. The underworld shared out the centimeters of sidewalks in blood, billions rained down on the city but they didn't manage to touch the ground, all intercepted in mid-air. Giancarlo knew Torre Annunziata, which is not the surname and name of a young lady but a Vesuvian town sloping down to the gulf and a degraded slaughterhouse of the dead killed for almost nothing. Giancarlo had friends there and collected fresh news of increasingly dirty things. He easily earned sympathy and esteem, he had simple ways by nature and a courtesy that was the fruit of family education. He could make conversation with anyone in a few minutes, but without being a friend, but with measure and in a low voice. These qualities were coupled with a natural physical courage.
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